Cooking Up a Circular Kitchen

Abstract

The built environment can be made more circular by gradually replacing building components with more circular components during construction, renovation, or maintenance. However, many different design options can be seen as circular. Although there is a growing number of studies about circular design options, research on what makes these options feasible or not feasible in practice is limited. This type of research requires intensive, long-term involvement with practitioners. Therefore, this article presents a longitudinal case study of an exemplary circular building component: the circular kitchen. The researchers actively engaged in a co-creation with industry partners to develop a circular kitchen design, supply chain model, and business model. All the choices made from initiative to market implementation were documented. Five lessons were drawn from an analysis of the stakeholder choices that can aid the future development of feasible circular building components: about ambition, aesthetics, design scale, participation, and focus.